Another NJ offshore wind project runs into turbulence as Leading Light seeks pause

Another offshore wind project in New Jersey is encountering turbulence.

Leading Light Wind is asking the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to give it a pause through late December on its plan to build an offshore wind farm off the coast of Long Beach Island.

In a filing with the utilities board made in July but not posted on the board's web site until Tuesday, the company said it has had difficulty securing a manufacturer for turbine blades for the project and is currently without a supplier.

It asked the board to pause the project through Dec. 20 while a new source of blades is sought.

Wes Jacobs, the project director and vice president of Offshore Wind Development at Invenergy — one of the project's partners — said it is seeking to hit the pause button “in light of industry-wide shifts in market conditions.”

It seeks more time for discussions with the board and supply chain partners, he said.

“As one of the largest American-led offshore wind projects in the country, we remain committed to delivering this critically important energy project, as well as its significant economic and environmental benefits, to the Garden State,” he said in a statement Tuesday night.

The statement added that the company, during a pause, would continue moving its project ahead with such developmental activities as an "ongoing survey program and preparation of its construction and operations plan.”

The request was hailed by opponents of offshore wind, who are particularly vocal in New Jersey.

“Yet another offshore wind developer is finding out for themselves that building massive power installations in the ocean is a fool’s errand, especially off the coast of New Jersey,” said Protect Our Coast NJ. “We hope Leading Light follows the example of Orsted and leaves New Jersey before any further degradation of the marine and coastal environment can take place.”

Nearly a year ago, Danish wind energy giant Orsted scrapped two offshore wind farms planned off New Jersey's coast, saying they were no longer financially feasible to build.

Atlantic Shores, another project with preliminary approval in New Jersey, is seeking to rebid the financial terms of its project.

And opponents of offshore wind have seized on the disintegration of a wind turbine blade off Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts in July that sent crumbled pieces of it washing ashore on the popular island vacation destination.

Leading Light was one of two projects chosen in January by the state utilities board. But just three weeks after that approval, one of three major turbine manufacturers, GE Vernova, said it would not announce the kind of turbine Invenergy planned to use in the Leading Light Project, according to the filing with the utilities board.

A turbine made by manufacturer Vestas was deemed unsuitable for the project, and the lone remaining manufacturer, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, told Invenergy in June “that it was substantially increasing the cost of its turbine offering.”

“As a result of these actions, Invenergy is currently without a viable turbine supplier,” it wrote in its filing.

The project, from Chicago-based Invenergy and New York-based energyRE, would be built 40 miles off Long Beach Island and would consist of up to 100 turbines, enough to power 1 million homes.

New Jersey has become the epicenter of resident and political opposition to offshore wind, with numerous community groups and elected officials — most of them Republicans — saying the industry is harmful to the environment and inherently unprofitable.

Supporters, many of them Democrats, say that offshore wind is crucial to move the planet away from the burning of fossil fuels and the changing climate that results from it.

New Jersey has set ambitious goals to become the East Coast hub of the offshore wind industry. It built a manufacturing facility for wind turbine components in the southern part of the state to help achieve that aim.